The History of ISIS, as told by Dr. Ben Carson

In the course of my life I have received many accolades, often resulting from my work as a neurosurgeon, but not many are aware of the MacArthur “Genius Grant” I received due to my work as a historian. After the attacks in Paris, I set to work cataloguing all knowledge pertaining to the elusive terrorist group known as ISIS, information I will gladly share with the President should he decide to show a serious interest in foreign policy.

ISIS came to prominence in the American Midwest in 1997. It was comprised of Aaron Turner, Jeff Caxide, Chris Mereschuk and Aaron Harris, reportedly forming as a result of dissatisfaction with the member’s former organized groups, which my research leads to me to believe was Islam. ISIS gained notoriety amongst underground factions of punks and those who self-identified as hardcore. The group aimed to fight the power to gain power—though it seems they were not moving quick enough for Mereschuk, who mysteriously left the group in 1998.

A year later, the ISIS name would arise again across the sea. It seems Mereschuk was not ready to give up on ISIS. In 1999, Iraq wasn’t on the radar, making it the perfect place to begin his work in seclusion. A small band of ISIS recruits spent their days as simple grain farmers in the Middle East. For those unfamiliar with the terrain, much of the region is comprised of desert landscapes. In many cases the only crop that can grow is Afghan Heroin. This made a grain a valuable cash crop, one this band of farmers used to steadily gain control over the region.

In a move to be perceived as “metal,” ISIS made beheadings a part of its daily routine. They started with goats, and in an attempt to see what they could get away with, bit a bat’s head off on live television. It was gruesome sight. For the sake of decency I’ll skip what they’ve attempted to dismember in recent years, though I would like to note their inability to match my precision with a surgeon’s scalpel.

As social media came into prominence, ISIS used advanced recruiting tactics to rope in a legion of millennials. From memes to .gifs of kittens exploding, it won the hearts of America’s youngest nihilists. ISIS targeted Americans for their strength and reputation as a nation-builder.

With a legion of tech-savvy teens in tow, ISIS set out on its most ambitious mission: to fabricate the existence of an entire country. Sequestering and repopulating the land once used for grain farming, ISIS converted a section of Northern Iraq into what is currently recognized as modern-day Syria. I say modern-day because we never heard much about Syria prior to 2012. This is because ISIS’ current legion of cyber-terrorists have manufactured a history pre-dating ISIS, and they maintain a vigilant watch of the Syria Wikipedia page to ensure this information doesn’t change.

Syria is effectively the Truman Show of the Middle East. Nothing is real. The man in the moon is the current leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. ISIS has used this region to falsify an entire refugee crisis in which every “Syrian” attempting to leave is an ISIS sleeper cell.

The group may seem all-powerful, but I have calculated that we could effectively wipe them out by sending in 10,000 troops to infiltrate their faux-country and disconnect their WiFi. This would leave ISIS without the ability to communicate with their refugee-soldiers while we drop the big one. As I like to say, it’s not brain surgery.